Hillary Clinton

So before I start this post I need to remind you of a couple of things. The first is that I publicly stated 10 months ago that Hillary Clinton would be the next President and the GOP knows it (although I did also state back then that the only person who could trip her up was Donald Trump). Also I want to reiterate that I think the best person to be President is Bernie Sanders, even more than his political ideology I think it would be a fascinating 4 years letting someone run the country who is not only outside the establishment, but also has a consistent track record of doing what is best for the people of America.

As I sit here today, over 15,000 km from the capital of the state of Vermont, I still think that Hillary Clinton will be President. I think that Trump will give her a much closer run than many did, and are yet to, give him credit for which they do at their own peril, and I have to say from my daily grind whomever wins will not change my life one iota. In saying all of that there are some very important reasons for every supporter of either Democratic candidate to insist that Bernie Sanders stay in this race right up until the convention.

The first, and most important, is that he could still win. I’ve already posted that it was improbable when he needed 57% of the remaining vote and now that he needs 66% it’s even more unlikely but it’s still not, as some are saying, mathematically over. He still has a shot to win so why should he pull out. When the Highlanders (that’s rugby for you Northern Hemisphere folk) are 20 behind with 10 minutes to go I don’t want them to walk off the field, I want them to fight for as long as the have a chance.

The second is that Hillary Clinton is currently under Federal investigation. Please don’t buy into the lie that the Clinton Campaign is feeding the media that it’s not an “investigation” but a “security inquiry.” There are currently a minimum of 12 FBI agents working full time on this case, there are important participants being given immunity to any potential charges. The FBI Director James Comey put this whole suggestion of “inquiry” to bed when asked by a reporter of this was actually an investigation. He responded by saying he was “not familiar” with the term “security inquiry” and put the nail in the coffin when pointing out that all the FBI did was investigations by saying, “it’s in our name.” So if Clinton get’s charged with anything and Sanders is not there, hello “President Trump!” Now most are saying that it will be hard to prove “intent” in this case, which means the FBI needs to prove that Clinton intended to show classified files to people who didn’t have clearance, but nonetheless the investigation is ongoing.

The third who all Democratic supporters should want Sanders to stay in the race is that if he was to bow out, then Clinton’s oxygen from the 24 hour news cycle. The main reason she is getting so much coverage at the moment is that this race continues and the GOP race is over. Once there are two candidates and the “news” media are looking for a lead who do you think they will go to? The establishment candidate who is trying to not rock the boat too much or the rodeo clown talking about chem trails? If you are a Clinton supporter, and Sanders was to bow out, your candidate will get zero coverage compared to Trump. News these days (unfortunately) is info-tainment in which Clinton might be the “info”, Trump definitely is the “tainment” and it’s the tainment that rates. Clinton gets far more oxygen whilst Sanders is still there.

The fourth reason reflects a little bit reason number two. It’s not that I think anything will be in the report, but it has just been announced that the House Report on Benghazi will be out before the conventions. Is there anything in there to hurt Clinton? Probably not but then I probably won’t be in a car crash when I next drive my car, but I still put on my seat belt. Sanders is the Democratic seat belt at the moment.

As an aside, there is potentially another “seat belt” out there at the moment who maybe the establishment is lining up should one if these scandals hit Clinton hard and that’s Joe Biden. Why else would he be coming out at this point in the political cycle telling the people of America that he would be the best President of the whole class of 2016…watch this space.

Finally to those people who are calling for Sanders to step aside because he is “doing Trump’s work” then let me ask you two questions.

What do you think that Sanders has said about Clinton that Trump already doesn’t have in his barrel? What secret angle or piece of information does Sanders have that a man that would bring up Bill Clinton’s sexual past, and blame Hillary for it, doesn’t know, have or is willing to invent?

Why would you support a candidate that some off the cuff remark, or opinion spoke about them, or truth be said about their record might be enough to lose this election to a maniac? That candidate doesn’t sound like a particularly strong candidate to me.

If you want to see a President that comes from the Democratic side of the isle, it’s pretty clear to me (and hopefully you now) that it is imperative that Bernie Sanders stay in the race.

Like this:

Bernie Sanders has the momentum. He has won 6 primaries in a row and 7 of the last 8. Yesterday he received 80% of the millennial vote in the Wisconsin Primary and there is a ground swell coming the likes of which American politics has never seen. With all this, it is still an uphill battle that most commemorators don’t think he will be able to climb to get that nomination for the Democratic Party to take on the Republicans in November.

He needs more

That ‘more’ comes in the Democratic Senator from Massachusetts, Elizabeth Warren who many believe will eventually come out to support Sanders but is currently keeping her powder very, very dry.

Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren need to come together and announce that she would be his running mate should he be elected as the nominee. She answers many of the questions that are being asked about with Bernie Sanders including the most recent “is he a Democrat anyways?” by Hilary Clinton. Any women still sticking with Hillary Clinton because she is a woman would then also have the opportunity to take the gender difference out of the equation as both sides would be breaking the glass ceiling for women on some level.

The usual process of nominating a running mate happens in either July or August so this would be an unconventional step for the Sanders campaign to take but one needs to ask what about this Sanders campaign has been conventional to date. It could also be a risky step for Warren to take as if Sanders does not get the nomination she may well be in the wilderness in a Clinton presidency.

Sanders has the momentum, Clinton currently has the numbers but watch this space.

Like this:

Of the three remaining contestants in the GOP run for President, Ted Cruz is the only one with no path forward.

I used to do a radio slot where I talked to a Conservative American contributor one week, then a Progressive American contributor in the same slot the following week. I’ve stayed connected to the Conservative contributor even though it’s evident by the stone wall of silence I get from him that he now wants nothing to do with me, however I enjoy going to his page and seeing what his followers and ‘friends’ are talking about. Steve Deace is a ‘major surrogate of Ted Cruz‘, as Carly Fiorina described respondeding to a tweet he sent out claiming she “goes full vagina” during a debate introduction, and he actively tells his listeners and followers that if they support Trump they need to unfriend him and not listen to his radio show. I wanted to explain a bit of background to this because my comments about Cruz having no path forward is in no way support for Kasich or Trump as I have been accused of on Deace’s Facebook page so to my American friends and readers please take this post as a perspective from outside America from someone who follows your election process religiously and can see the pros and cons from many aspects..

Ted Cruz has no path forward for three reasons. He will not get to the magical 1237 delegates before the GOP conference, he will not be the front runner when it comes to the GOP conference and he is not the candidate that the conference establishment will get behind so he is stuck in no-mans-lands.

For Ted Cruz to win the nomination before the conference he need to win about 772 of the remaining 848 delegates (or 91%) to make it to 1237 which is the number of delegates needed to become the GOP Presidential nomination so we can eliminate that as a possibility immediately.

For Cruz to become the front runner, and by that I mean leader in number of delegates, before the convention he will need to win between 60% and 70% of the remaining delegates. Even if he was awarded all the winner take all states he would still need to win about 55%-60% of all the remaining proportional delegates. These numbers are highly, highly improbable even if we just give a big win to Trump in New York, which will happen, the equation falls over for Cruz.

Finally if no one receives the 1237 delegates outright we go to a contested convention and, as we have seen in the past, these conventions are usually controlled by the party insiders whom today are referred to with disdain as the ‘party elite‘ or the ‘establishment‘. The ‘establishment‘ hates Ted Cruz to the core leaving John Kasich as the only candidate left for the elite to support.

So Ted Cruz won’t get 1237 delegates, he won’t be the front runner, he is not going to be the establishment choice…so what next?

The obvious answer is that there is no path forward for him, he ticks no boxes that lead to him being the nomination…apart from one. The ‘anyone but Trump’ box.

The only way that Ted Cruz could possibly become the GOP nominee for President is either John Kasich drops out making Cruz the lesser of two evils with two non-establishment candidates, or is the establishment move away from their candidate in Kasich because they think that Cruz has a better chance of beating Clinton or Sanders in November. Unfortunately for Cruz in most if not all of the head to head Presidential polls over the past few months Kasich has out performed both Trump and Cruz leaving the establishment at the convention to justifiably put forward Kasich as the most likely candidate to beat either Democratic nominee which leaves Cruz’s only chance being Kasich dropping out which looks unlikely.

Whilst you never say never in politics, it seems to me that speaking logically it is highly unlikely any of the above possibilities for Cruz above will be the scenario for him to get the nomination which leads me to believe that there is no path forward for Ted Cruz to be the Republican nominee for the 2016 Presidential Election.

I said in August of 2015 that Hillary Clinton was going to walk away with this election and the GOP knew she was. I actually think in February of 2016 that is still the most likely scenario, but it’s not quite as clear cut as it was, and it’s certainly not what is best for America, but then again what is best for American may shock some Americans (unless you’re under 35).

Bernie Sanders is a septuagenarian politician who is resonating with Millennials/GenY population of the US. He is a Democratic Socialist and wants kids in American to be able to have access to free tertiary education and thinks that to have free access to health care is a human right that everyone should be entitled. He is the candidate, Democrat or Republican, who has the most consistent track record over 40 plus years of his political ideology and he would bring a revolution to the US should he get over the line and be the Democratic nominee…and there is a chance that may happen.

One of Bernie Sanders’ biggest issues is that as a ‘Democratic Socialist’ he has been tarred with a narrative from his opposition that he is un-electable, however polls are showing again and again that he is probably more electable than Hillary Clinton.

These are a series of polls by Quinnipiac University, a reputable source of polling, and shows that in a head to head race Hillary Clinton loses to 4 out of the 5 GOP candidates (even Bush who is no longer there) and only beats Donald Trump by one point whereas Sanders beats all 5 GOP candidates, two of them with double digit leads. Now ‘yes’ this is just a poll and we all know that the only poll that matters in on electron day, but the trend is showing Sanders’ support increasing and Clinton’s decreasing to a point where the votes are looking very 50/50 in most of the foreseeable primaries.

What the American population needs to understand that what this ‘far left’ oft called ‘Socialist’ candidate is promising them is what the rest of the world calls ‘business as usual’. In NZ Sanders would be on the centre-left, swinging to the left on some of his ideas, but he wouldn’t be seen as extreme in his views. In the UK it’s just been pointed out the Sanders is very much like their Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. I would like to see an interview with our ‘Right Wing’ Prime Minister asking him where he stood on some of Sanders’ ideas and you’d find that he would likely agree with a good portion of them. Say that to an American conservative voter and their head would explode.

Looking specifically at this election, the numbers are clear, that if Bernie Sanders is the Democratic nomination he is the favorite to be the next President, however the institution set up around the political world of corporate money, advertising dollars, SuperPac influence do not want Sanders to get the nod and whether he can overcome that is the biggest question. Clinton is weak in areas that appeal to the voter for Sanders, she takes money from SuperPacs, she earns from Wall Street (millions in fact from speeches she and Bill have given) and she doesn’t want to upset the apple cart with small manageable goals versus Sanders calling for a revolution. Clinton has chinks in her armor that a GOP nominee could exploit whereas they don’t have that opportunity against Sanders. She is still under a cloud with the FBI investigating here email server issue and questions around how money is being used in the Clinton Foundation, if either of those blew up during the presidential run, well I don’t want to alarm anyone, but you could well be saying “Hello President Trump.”

What both the Democrats and GOP need to understand is that, if not this election, then the reign of the institutional politician is coming to an end. If Clinton get’s over the line this time, then by the end of an 8 year reign that Millenial/GenY population will be late 20s to mid 40s and a very powerful voting block possiblly even having nominees running for President themselves.

I would love to see a President Sanders and yes I am prepared to say that whilst I think the odds are still with Clinton, the best thing for America would be to #FeelTheBern and put Sanders in the Whitehouse.

I admit it, I’m a political tragic. I watch, I read, I talk politics 24/7 often to the frustration of my friends and family. I love (that’s L-O-V-E) the American political system and its tendency to maneuver effortlessly between political animal, theatrical event and circus performance. I don’t admire the American political system…but it’s like a drug that I can’t get enough of.

I picked Barrack Obama to win in 2008 over a year out, and again in 2012 in fact I’ve been pretty good at predicting US results, and terrible with our own, maybe this is testament to how much I love watching the insanity that Jon Stewart calls ‘Democalypse 2012/2016″ etc…

I am in the middle of watching the two GOP debates on FoxNews and I wanted to state publicly that all the posturing that the candidates are doing is not going to make one jot of difference. Hillary Clinton will be the next President of the United States and the Republicans know it.

Since 2007 the Republican Party has lost the votes of women, minorities and the youth. There has been nothing done to redress this issue, in fact since the 2008 election they have lost even more support from that segment of society. If all things were equal, and a political party was actively trying to attracted a demographic and doing a great job at it, it would take longer that one election cycle to achieve this. The current GOP front runners are not only not doing a good job at attracting back those votes, in many cases they are harming their chances of getting them even more putting at risk the ability to win in 2020 and 2024 as well.

The Republican Party know this as in evident in their attacks on Hilary Clinton already, 16 months out from the election they are already painting here as evil incarnate and blaming her for every negative position they are also throwing at President Obama linking the two as one.

Here is an example from the official GOP twitter account from yesterday.

I think we all accept that Clinton will be the Democratic nominee, but as she isn’t officially selected yet, it’s fascinating that the Republicans are attacking her and are scaring their base into action for 2016. Just watch how many of those kinds of tweets become talking points for ‘Joe the plumber‘ types in news interviews next year.

As ironic as it sounds, and maybe you’ll think me a little naive, but I believe that the only way that the GOP has any chance of taking down the Democrats and getting into the Whitehouse is if the nominee ends up being Donald Trump. The rationale behind this is a little unusual, as a wee bit disrespectful to Mr. Trump, but here goes.

The absolute ridiculous nature or having Donald Trump as POTUS will be so enticing to a sector of the American voting public that he might get the bump he needs. Think the ‘Bill and Ben Party‘ or ‘McGillicuddy Serious Party‘ there is a protest vote that goes with that parody of a party that attracts disenfranchised and young voters. The problem is, Mr. Trump is not a parody, he is very much a real and active part of the American political landscape. I still don’t think that will be enough to get the GOP over the line…but my goodness that would be the best television political tragics like me, would have ever seen.

If the political gods are listening right now please, oh please, oh please let Donald Trump get the Republican nomination